Stand Next to the Sun Without Burning to Death

Stand Next to the Sun Without Burning to Death

May 1, 2015 - Inside a new art installation called "Solarium," visitors immerse themselves in the amazing sights and sounds of the sun. Using data from
the Solar Dynamics Observatory, data visualization experts and highly
skilled video editors and graphic artists have created a large-scale video that gives a whole new look at the life-giving star we call the sun. "Solarium" is
currently installed throughout the United States, but this unique
visual experience is on permanent exhibition at the visitor's center at
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

GENNA DUBERSTEIN, LEAN MULTIMEDIA PRODUCER FOR HELIOPHYSICS,
NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER:
There’s something about having that one-on-one time with the
sun.

You feel moved by it.

You can go in and attempt to teach people about high-level
solar physics or why should care about science in general. But Solarium in its simplicity and its
construction it think does something greater than inform. It inspires.

People walk away wanting to know more about what they just
experienced.

GENNA DUBERSTEIN SOT: “There are some nice loops happening
right is there also. Uh-huh, there’s
like a little bit of sparkling.”

So when you’re viewing “Solarium” you are seeing all kinds
of amazing solar events like solar flares, prominence eruptions. You get to see active regions doing their
work and churning and creating loops and sparks.

ALEX YOUNG SOT: “All of these top four and image on the
bottom right are all images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory, which is the
spacecraft that provides the data and imagery for the “Solarium” exhibit.

ALEX YOUNG, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR SCIENCE, HELIOPHYSICS
SCIENCE, NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER:
The images that you see in the “Solarium” exhibit are part
of a set of cameras that allow us to look at the sun in ten different
wavelengths of light, from the visible all the way through ultraviolet and
extreme ultraviolet.

A lot of the real interesting stuff that happens on the sun
like solar flares and coronal mass ejections is really visible in these
wavelengths of light that don’t make it to the ground.

We get a stream of information of zeros and ones that come
down. And once we get that, we have to
decode it and turn it back into an image.

GENNA DUBERSTEIN, LEAN MULTIMEDIA PRODUCER FOR HELIOPHYSICS,
NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER:
We’ll take all of this information to our data visualizer
and he’ll take all of the data that SDO has sent down and he’ll find the
parameters and he’ll code all of that data into images for us. And he’ll
produce thousands and thousands of frames.
And each one of these frames is actually quite large. It’s bigger than 4K for a TV. It’s about big enough to fill nine HD
televisions. It’s pretty hefty material.

When people enter “Solarium,” we want people to experience
the really wonderful, awe-inspiring yet soothing sense of calm you get when you’re
view this material in this way.

ALEX YOUNG, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR SCIENCE, HELIOPHYSICS
SCIENCE, NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER:
I’m hoping that people will come and feel that passion, feel
the excitement, feel that amazement and simply want to know more about science
and want it to be a part of their life.
Not to necessary understand all the minutiae and sort of the gory
details, you know. But to enjoy it and
to look at images from SDO or anything and just be happy excited about that.

Stand Next to the Sun Without Burning to Death

May 1, 2015 - Inside a new art installation called "Solarium," visitors immerse themselves in the amazing sights and sounds of the sun. Using data from
the Solar Dynamics Observatory, data visualization experts and highly
skilled video editors and graphic artists have created a large-scale video that gives a whole new look at the life-giving star we call the sun. "Solarium" is
currently installed throughout the United States, but this unique
visual experience is on permanent exhibition at the visitor's center at
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.